Show tunes, cartoons,
child memories:
were they girlish? Not as I recall.
Full moons, new moons,
fiction histories:
being female made me view them all
beneath the lens unfairness. How could I
be other than my brothers in my heart?
How could I be different in my soul?
So I have a fundamental part
of hidden shape: why do theirs control?

(I couldn’t then and no more can I now
accept my primitive society.
If rights and powers must derive from how
I am in parts of my anatomy,
then I refuse to play the game of life.
I must assume that woman’s destiny
is more than nurturer and less than wife,
for otherwise the scheme’s inanity.)